It is July that’s the cruelest month.

He agrees.

Wait a minute!

what’s that I hear?  Thunder?

Yes!  It’s raining! Grazie a dio I may live yet!  The grass may live!  The racial tensions may subside!  The pensioners may not be found floating down the Po (this is not a joke).

RAIN!

After 24 days of living in Torino in my lovely yet quite warm (all of Torino is downright hot; I think I have mentioned this before if I am not mistaken??) apartment, today my landlady had the Vodafone technician here to install what at home we call (in Apple world)  an airport, or a wireless base station.  I bought one at my Apple store back home, took it home, installed it, and had internet available immediately.

A couple years later, because Apple is extremely good at marketing, I bought and installed an Airport Extreme with a built-in Time Capsule, which works more or less seamlessly with the built in Apple software of Time Machine that is already on my laptop.

Or something like that.  I have two Apple wifi base stations in the USA.  Both currently in storage, because of course even though we all know the world is flat and getting flatter every day, internet hardware is not created for a flat world, because where’s the fun in that?  Or the profit?

Normally, in Italy or indeed all parts of the modern world, nowadays when you check into a good hotel, have a coffee in a good bar, or go into a good bookstore, they supply you with a wifi connection.  Sometimes you need a password, which they give you upon asking, and sometimes no password is needed.

But when I arrived at my lovely, warm Torino apartment rented on Airbnb.com, I discovered a loophole.  The first of many of course,

I discovered that while my modern apartment had a new dishwasher and washing machine and many other modern conveniences, my landlady hadn’t been schooled in internet expectations.  And she didn’t manage mine very well.

You see, her listing on Airbnb.com said the apartment had a dishwasher, etc., etc., etc., and internet, but it didn’t warn me to expect the internet to only work intermittently and then, when up, for only 30 minutes a day, per day.

And this is where you start to realize what an American snob you really are, when all the while you consider yourself to be such a gracious guest in such an excellent old world country.

But, before you start ragging on yourself too much, you remember that a mere 6 months ago, in Dec. of 2015 to be exact, you moved to Italy for 3 months to see if this was a move you still wanted to make and you found your life in Florence and then Lucca to be more than up to any hopes, let alone expectations.

Because in the two apartments I rented in Florence and then Lucca from Dec. 1, 2015 to March 1, 2016, I had unlimited wireless internet. And I made a critical assumption.  Which we all know is the wrong thing to do. Ever.

So in planning my big move for July 1, 2016, I made sure to be all wireless all the time.  I have books and movies and all kinds of content on my laptop.  I watch tv on my laptop.  I write letters and short stories and blogs and a book manuscript and save them all on my laptop.  I thought I was so prepared.

But all of these wireless activities require time, as in minuti, ore, giorni, or minutes, hours, and days even, and I have not yet learned how to type faster than the speed of the internet.  I’m working on it, but it hasn’t happened yet.

My son says one of his first conscious thoughts about me as a separate entity from him was that I could type way fast.  Our computer was in his bedroom way back in the olden days, and I would often be typing when I thought he was reading or even sleeping and he says he marveled at my quickness.  Now he says he types faster.  And he might.  But I can tell you this, they don’t teach typing at his high school just like they don’t teach kids how to write in cursive anymore, so he is more or less self-taught plus the typing programs we bought for him to learn.  But I am digressing way outside of my contribution to Torino, so let me rein this in.

Ahem,

You see that marvelous white plastic box with the wires coming out of it?  That’s a Vodafone wireless base station and its now sitting on the beautiful white marble steps leading from my hallway to my living room etc.  You are welcome, world.

It would seem that after I complained  er, ah, commented so frequently in the first odd seven or ten days I was here until I finally gave up and went to the damn Vodafone store myself and bought my own damn Vodafone portable wireless base station and a year’s subscription to the service and a monthly usage fee, my landlady concluded that since she was going to be renting this apartamento out for the next year at least to other americani like moi, she had better face the music and get the damn wifi base station set up NOW so she wouldn’t have to deal with complaints or comments bitching Americans in the future, or perhaps even have her current tenant write her a bad review on Airbnb.com.

So she ordered the base station SUBITO (right away). She said she did anyway.  How would I know?

And yesterday, after something like two weeks, Vodafone told her, or she received in the mail, or the Virgin Mary may have spoken to her directly, I really don’t know, anyhoo, I got an email from landlady that she and Vodafone tech need to get into my apartment today between 1 and 2 and did I mind and would I be here.

And since one of the first principles I live by in my new life as an ex pat in Italy is to go with the flow, live in the present, not worry about domani, etc., I can’t tell anybody tonight what I might be doing tomorrow between 1 and 2.  I leave myself a really wide berth.  Because all kinds of unexpected mental and physical things can and do happen at often the most inopportune times (I know this because I live this, 24/7), I don’t promise anything about anything or anybody for tomorrow. Myself included.  Sometimes I am a stranger even to myself anyway.

So trying to be agreeable and kind, which I am in general, I said of course you and the technician can come and install it. But I asked, either you or your husband will be there, correct?  And if the answer to that question is “si” then of course you may come into the apartment.  I may or may not be here.  She replied, via email of course, that she or husband and tech would be here today between 1 and 2.

I got up earlier than usual today and made sure the lovely warm apartment was spotless.  I was prepared for the doorbell to ring any time from 12:35 p.m. forward.  It rang at 2:15 and that’s fine because this is Italy.  I expected this.

In walks landlady and nice young Vodafone tech and he gets to work while she expresses her continued disappointment in me.  I’ve heard this every time I’ve seen her or spoken to her on the cellulare since I got here.  She isn’t a people person.  She’s a tightly wound, fairly bitter, uncharachterisitcally (I give up on spelling.  There’s no spell check on WordPress that I have found and I am tired of jumping to Dictionary.com to refresh my spelling chops all of the time) unfriendly Italian woman. And she thinks, without doubt, that I am the biggest wimp she has ever met.  It is written all over her face.

Too long again, too many words again.  I hadn’t realized I was so long-winded until recently.  I think its the heat.

So, I cut to the chase. The base station is here and plugged into electricity.  But, wouldn’t you know it, neither Vodafone tech or landlady thought to think that the landline wires in this palazzo are from the 1940s with an outlet comme ça:

But the base station connects to the landline comme ça:

In other words, they don’t work together.  Kind of like landlady and me. :-)) One is oil, the other vinegar.

Get the picture?  So, after all is said and done, the landlady and/or husband (I’m betting it’s husband, he’s the good cop) had to go find an adapter that will allow these two things to attach.

But that isn’t the end of this story.  But it is the end of this post. ;-))

Don’t know.  Haven’t seen rain since I left the US in June.  I’d love to see some rain.

But I do know that I am pouring out posts tonight like a bat outta hell.  My stream of consciousness runneth over.

So, dear reader, travel backwards in time with me to a few posts ago when I mentioned I’d be picking up this thread again sometime about the sodas:

I was in the Palazzo Reale campus in Torino, walking through the Galleria Sabauda, and honest to god after having my mind absolutely blown by the magnificence (and that’s a word I don’t overuse; I hate hyperbole) of the palazzo itself, I was unprepared for the magnificence again of the art holdings of the Galleria Sabauda. I mean it absolutely blew my sox off when I wandered in front of a painting by Bronzino, a bas-relief by Desiderio di Settignano, and more.

The best way to view a museum, in my opinion, is without knowing what to expect.  You go to the Met in New York, you expect to be wowed.  And you are.  The Met is magnificent.

But what I like even more than that is the opportunity to have my sox blown off.  And that’s what happened in the Galleria Sabauda.  And, there’s more.

Also attached to the Palazzo Reale campus is the Archeological Museum.  I just spent 5 minutes spelling archeological correctly.  Where, I would like to know, is spell check when you actually want/need it.  No where to be found is where.  Exactly.

For some reason I will never understand, the Galleria Sabauda is overly air-conditioned (which, believe me, is a compliment in this tropical heat wave we’ve been in since July 2, but who’s counting?) and the attached archaeology museum is not.  Benvenuto italia.  Nothing makes sense here.  Which is one of the reasons I love it.  I fell down the rabbit hole a long time ago.

And when I walked into the heat of the archeology part, the heat hit me like a wave.  And I realized I hadn’t had anything to drink in too long.  And I wandered down a long hallway that led to the light, kinda like near death experiences are always described.  And I wound up underground in a hot cement underground staff lounge, with

wait for it

vending machines! and I put a Euro in the slot not knowing how much a Pepsi was because of course there was no signage about the price…

and I pressed the button for Pepsi

and listened for the magical sound of my item dropping from the machine into the fabulous slot below

and heard the sound

and reached in for my Pepsi

and pulled out a lemon lime soda.  And drank it faster than you can type Pepsi. And then sat down at a table while smiling at a group of Italian tourists who wandered into this rabbit hole after me and also spied the vending machines, or possibly just the crazy americana, and started digging for their change.  It was a couple with their two young sons.  And the minute those boys heard the pop of my can, or the site of the vending machines, or something like that…they were all over their parents for change.

and I inexplicably found myself explaining to them that I got lemon lime when I hit Pepsi and they put in the money and hit lemon lime and got one, and then we all smiled and shrugged our shoulders about the deep mysteries of life

and then I noticed that way back in the back of the fabulous, magnificent vending machine slot was an unloved, undetected can of something.  And naturally I stuck my hand in and pulled out the can and it was my Pepsi afterall.  So I got a free lemon lime soda.

And I popped the lid on that Pepsi faster than those boys could say “mamma mia” and like the crazy americana that I have become (or maybe always was), I downed that Pepsi.

I like to think that on my good days–back when I spoke English fluently and so forth–I would have given the free Pepsi to the boys.  And that they wouldn’t have fought over it.

but what with my dehydration and such like, I just went ahead and drank the liquid moonlight in a can.  Normally I would say sunshine in a can, but honestly, I’ve had enough with the sun and heat for a while

And the most amazing thing to me is, that no matter how many liquids I consume this summer, I never have to use the bathroom.  Because my body has already sweated out the amount of liquids that I will consume until October 17, 2015.

And as far as I can tell I am still alive, or maybe I found the light and am already in heaven and just haven’t woken up yet.

And that is the end of the lemon-lime/Pepsi story and I’m happy it’s finally told. I hope it was worth the wait.

This is the correct proportion of the drinks I received from the magnificent vending machine in the Archaeological Museum in the Palazzo Reale campus in Torino (say that five times fast).  But whether mine was a Shasta and whether, like this picture, the words said “lime-lemon soda” or as I automatically assume “lemon-lime soda” I can never say, because that was several days ago and I’ve moved on, people. :-))

I honestly sent a friend an email with the above subject line today!

I meant to write, and I actually think that I did write: “from your Torino pen pal.”  I hate spell check.  I actually like what I spell 90% of the time, so I’d appreciate it if spell check would get the the hell out of my life.  But, like a lot of things.  I have no control over that.

So my subject line came out as “Re: you Torino, Italia penal” which is pretty damn funny if you ask me.

I think it is somehow Freudian.  Not exactly sure how.  It is just sort of vaguely provocative when it was totally innocent to begin with.

and I still didn’t get what I want.

I think it’s the heat.  Nothing is working right.  Not my brain.  Not the internet. Niente.

F: Furbo

“Ma quella ragazza è proprio furba!” [That girl is truly clever!] is half compliment, half criticism. She’s devious, she’s sneaky, but you have to hand it to her, boy, that girl knows how to obtain results.

http://www.arttrav.com/headline/italian-translations/

I think.  I can’t be sure.  I left them somewhere and I don’t think it was San Francisco.  Wasn’t that my heart?  Penso.  I think so.

I only wish I could have taken a picture today of the Italian man who tried to pick me up in a piazza today. I was drinking a MacDonald’s giant coke with ice and resting on a hot bench (hot to the touch, but I was desperate to sit down). He had on a neon green polyester sports shirt and matching shoes, and some kind of shorts and that’s all I saw before I saw how he was leering at me. I tried to be cool but had to leave. But I see a lot of beautiful Italian men in my age bracket so I am starting to zero in.

I left my keys in my apartment today, but it’s only 90 degrees 24 hours a day so I’m doing well. :-))